I decided to research his name and try and find links to work he's done. I was able to find his youtube channel, "The Cheezinator", which shows his most recent showreel:
At the beginning of the session, he began by introducing himself and saying a little about the state of the stopmotion industry in the UK. Conclusion: Not Good!
He named a few studio/companies he had worked for and that had now closed down. One name I recognised from this list was "Cosgrove Hall", which I was very surprised to hear had shut down, as it was a relatively big studio.
I quickly did some internet research (namely; wikipedia) to see what programmes and films Cosgrove Hall had done.
Here are a few examples of their work which are familiar to myself:
-Engie Benjy
-Postman Pat
-Oakie Doke
-The Wind In The Willows
-Thomas and Friends
...and many more.
Here is the link to the wikipedia page on Cosgrove Hall : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosgrove_Hall_Films
One title from the list stood out for me. I remember as a child at Primary School, one day we watched an stopmotion animated short film of "Cinderella". To this day I still remember it, a few images still prominent in my mind. When I looked at this list and saw the title I had to have a look! And there it was! The very same one!
It's still so beautiful!
There was a link to it in youtube and I just had to watch! So here is the first part of a Cosgrove Hall 1981 stopmotion animated version of "Cinderella":
Getting back to the session, Austin Charlesworth then made us all watch an episode of a recent children's TV programme called "Igam Ogam", which he had worked on. I've watched an episode recently on TV prior to this session, so it was great to actually watch it with one of the animators actually there!
It's a brilliant little series. I really love the design of it and the characters are fantastically sweet and whimsical.
At the end of the episode, Austin paused the DVD on the last part of the "credits" where all the companies logos and names are presented. There were at least 7 or more companies there, which Austin said was a very bad thing. It means that there isn't enough money being put into a series on its own. This affects the outcome of the programme, as the more people there are investing, the more voices are having to be heard. So potentially there were about 7 companies/investors all asking for different things, ie: how the characters looked, what the scripts were, what colours the set had to be (etc). This makes it increasingly frustrating not only for the animators, but for everybody else who is involved as well.
Here are some more points I was able to note down from Austin from his work on "Igam Ogam":
-There were 26 episodes, all completed in 10 months.
-There were 5 animators at the start, which increased to 7 as the series progressed. -One animator has a designated "set" and works on around 5 episodes at a time.
-The characters all had replacement heads, with around 10 mouth shapes for each character. (The hair, in the case of the character 'Igam Ogam', was always kept the same)
-The heads were quite heavy at the start of filming, and would consequently fall over.
After this, Austin showed us some student work. The puppets he showed us were "below par" standard-wise for animating professionally.
He then showed us a puppet from Aardman which was an example of a better puppet to work with. (although this particular one was quite old and had "decomposed" to an extent) I made a quick sketch of what it looked like:
Here are some notes of advice from Austin in the session:
-Software for animating in stopmotion in the industry is "DPS Reality". A cheaper version is called "Dragon".
-Students should use balsar wood and polystyrene as materials for puppets as these materials are far cheaper than plasticine.
-(We, students) should start watching some Claymotion videos on the internet and start asking these questions: "Why is it good?" and "Why is it not good?" to start analysing stopmotion in depth.
-We should experiment with plasticine first
-If we were to make a mould, for example; arms, then we should make sure the mould is a 'natural' position so that there is a slight bend. This makes sure the mould doesn't break/snap, and makes it more user-friendly by the animators.
-When animated puppets have fabric clothes around them, they should be very tightly wrapped so that no 'boiling' animation can occur.
-Twisted wire lasts longer than a single strand of wire (for armature of puppet)
-Fimo can be used to bulk out legs - note: make sure you put the fimo only in places where it won't bend!
-Everything in stopmotion has a lifespan, even the lighting and the cameras, so everything has to be made as durable as possible for consistent results.
After this, Austin asked us to animate the "bouncing ball" exercise with plasticine. As I was only an observer, I decided not to participate in this exercise, as there were quite a few people there and as this was not my chosen option, I felt it best to let others do the task instead.
I quickly sketched my friends' Bry and Zara as people were animating and as Austin was talking... We were sitting on the floor, as there weren't enough seats.
Overall, it was a very interesting session. I loved hearing about the industry and all the information "on-set" etc. This is definitely the right option for me to attend as a second choice.
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Later on in the week we finally had our 2D option intro with Matthew Gravelle.
We were all given our "lesson plans" for the sesmester.
As my first option choice is 2D hand-drawn, I was really excited to get this lesson plan and see what the course had on offer for us for this term. I was not disappointed!
Out of the character performance tasks outlined, I must say I am really excited for the "dialogue" exercise. I really enjoyed the lip synching task last year. It was extremely difficult, but I remember absolutely loving trying to match the words to the body movements. It's all acting! It was really helpful in conveying emotions too, which I was eager to get. This year, the dialogue task will be between two characters, which I'm sure will be a bit of a challenge, but one I am really motivated to do!
The first exercise we have been given for completion by Week 4 is as such:
"Animate your character trying to open something that refuses to open"
I decided that I would bring back my character, Fifi, back for this task. We were either encouraged to create an entirely new character different from our one from last year, or, to at least re-design him/her. Skecthes and notes on her will be uploaded in the next post.
After the introduction we had a little workshop with Stan on scanning our animations in Photoshop and the "actions" panel. This is in preparation for Week 4's workshop where we'll be applying an alpha channel to our animations and adding a photo background. I made notes, so I'll hopefully be able to complete this successfully for Week 4.
---jkl---
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